Bargain Boxes Are Back Howdy! I am more than a little bit crispy today, as I drove 1175 miles over the weekend in order to go to Albuquerque, and back. My journey would've only been 1000 miles, except for the fact that the New Mexico state patrol closed Interstate 25 on Saturday morning because there were ground blizzards in a 40-mile area north of Las Vegas, New Mexico. To escape that bottleneck I took a bypass road that took me 50 miles out on to the eastern Plains of New Mexico, and then 125 miles south to catch Interstate 40 at Tucumcari. The scenery on that very remote back road was truly stunning, but being out there in the middle of nowhere is quite scary when you are driving a car with 300,000 miles on the odometer. Blessedly, my old van made it through just fine, and my homebound trip was also quite easy. Snowdrifts in northeastern New Mexico. My getting home to Boulder last night was a real blessing, as it is minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit here in Denver this afternoon, with a steady snow falling. I am very experienced at driving in the snow, but Colorado has seen hundreds of thousands of people immigrate here over the past five years, many of whom are from places where they seldom have to deal with snow. Some of those folks either overreact by driving 20 mph in the fast lane (with their hazard lights blinking), or continue to drive 80 mph as though nothing had changed. Either way, they are an extreme hazard for those of us who know better. Sigh... Anyhoo, my return trip this weekend to Rose's Pottery in Bernallio, New Mexico was a wonderful success. I told everyone last week (both in this newsletter and on my personal Facebook page) that this 90 year-old Trading Post was closing for good yesterday, so they had a huge influx of visitors on Friday-Saturday-Sunday who purchased all kinds of cool Southwestern collectibles at greatly reduced prices. I waited until Sunday morning to do my own shopping, but then went into high gear to "rescue" as many of their older pieces of pottery as I could. As my photo illustrates, I accomplished a great deal of good on my trip. Chuck with his latest haul from Rose's Pottery. That having been said, while my photo would seem to imply that I bought Rose's Pottery out of their remaining stock, that is totally incorrect. In point of fact, they have so many pieces remaining that I purchased less than 10% of their vast inventory. I am presuming that some more pieces sold to other collectors after I began my return drive to Boulder, but even if several more dozen purchasers arrived on Sunday afternoon, I very much doubt that they made any sort of a significant dent. When you have been in business for 90 years, you accumulate a lot of cool stuff! In a nutshell, that is why I was delighted to hear that Rose's has been granted a one-week reprieve, and will have one last three-day weekend to dispose of their remaining stock. If you live anywhere near Bernallio (fifteen minutes north of Albuquerque) you should really try to stop by next weekend. They are located on the Main Street of town, right next door to The Range Cafe. They will be open this upcoming Friday-Saturday-Sunday 10-5. 'Nuff said. Chuck's van after his drive from Boulder to the Mega-Store this morning. As regards life here at Mile High Comics, I am spending all of my time sorting through recently-purchased long boxes filled with old comics. I sort them out by those that we need for our website inventory in any grade, those that we can afford to "intentionally downgrade" for you, and those where they are already stocked in such overabundance that we can afford to let them go for pennies on the dollar in our Jason St. bargain bins. These bargain bin comics are critically important to us for two reasons, as they are not only the driver of a lot of in-store revenues, but also the core resource that Noa draws upon when he is putting together his selections of comics that end up comprising our world-famous bargain boxes. I say "world-famous" because our sales of those mixed boxes of nice older comics absolutely exploded during COVID, with an estimated 5,000 bargain boxes selling just during our lockdowns. Yow! Since the lockdowns ended, we have reluctantly deemphasized selling our comics at such inexpensive rates, as our bargain boxes are actually quite labor-intensive to build. Now that we are finally getting a bit ahead in our sorting, however, I can once again (quietly) offer them to you. Here are the bargain boxes that Noa is currently building: MYSTERY BOXES (36 RANDOM COMICS) #1 MYSTERY BOXES (36 AVENGERS COMICS) #1 AVENGERS MYSTERY BOXES (36 BATMAN COMICS) #1 BATMAN MYSTERY BOXES (36 DC COMICS) #1 DC MYSTERY BOXES (36 IMAGE COMICS) #1 IMAGE MYSTERY BOXES (36 INDEPENDENT COMICS) #1 INDIES MYSTERY BOXES (36 JLA COMICS) #1 JLA MYSTERY BOXES (36 MARVEL COMICS) #1 MARVEL MYSTERY BOXES (36 SUPERMAN COMICS) #1 SUPERMAN MYSTERY BOXES (36 X-MEN, X-FORCE, X-FACTOR, ECT. COMICS) #1 X TITLES Aside from reinvigorating our bargain box program, we are still shipping lots of orders for individual issues at half of list price when our ongoing 50% off WINTER! codeword is utilized. As always, the 50% off discount applies to all ten million of our back issue comics and magazines, excepting only new issues, a few variants and restored comics, and our professionally-graded items. On a side note, my choice of WINTER! as our current codeword seems particularly apt to me right now, as it is so stunningly cold in much of the nation. While I do understand that being trapped by the cold and snow can be remarkably frustrating, I personally relax by catching up on my reading, and also by working on my various collections. Summer, with all of its accompanying extra work, will be here soon enough. For now, I am just going to relax, and take it easy for a while. I sincerely hope that you can relax, too. Happy collecting! Chuck Rozanski/Bettie Pages, President - Mile High Comics, Inc. January 15, 2024 Current Newsletter